Ugliness and shortness, while a major bummer, are not disabilities in the true sense of the word. To be disabled is to have a physical or cognitive handicap that literally dis-ables basic human functions like walking, talking, reading, writing, lifting, eating and so forth. To be disabled is to require some form of assistance, either from equipment or a carer, to get through each day.
Whilst there are many social prejudices against shortness and perceived ugliness, these things alone are not major handicaps to your ability to get through the day. I know they might feel like that, especially if you have been focusing on yourself and your appearance with an over critical eye, but they won't stop you from walking down the street and doing whatever you damn well please.
I say that because that's something you have going for you that you can be grateful for: the fortune of being fully abled. There are many people who would trade places with you just to be able to take a shit without the aid of a carer to wipe their ass.
Feeling as if you are ugly sucks and I'm not belittling your pain. But there are much worse things to have to cope with in life. Focusing on what you have going for you, rather than what you don't like about yourself, is the way to beat it. The world is a messed up place where babies die due to lack of clean water, so whilst you have the privilege of using your body's functions without impedance, it's worth taking advantage of that gift.
I used to be very insecure about my appearance. But I eventually came to the conclusion that no one else really gave a fuck how I looked because they were all wrapped up in their own insecurity anyway. I realised that the most powerful thing I could do was stop playing that game and get on with my life without giving a damn about shallow vanity. It was hard to start with but I started looking after myself a bit more, working harder, focusing on always doing my best and pursuing my own happiness. It lead me to higher paid employment, financial stability and much more self confidence. Meanwhile some of the ego dragging people I used to be intimidated by are still in the same dead end roles gossiping about who shagged who last Friday night.
The main reason I'm here on SS is because Corona fucked me up and I now struggle with tons of nerve damage and chronic fatigue and I constantly question if it's worth continuing with the uncertainty of recovery. I haven't CTB yet because part of me keeps telling myself that I should be grateful I didn't die like others and that I can still walk and talk. But if all I had going against me was the fact that I don't meet the shallow beauty standard of the social media era, nah... I'd be laughing in the face of the normies, taking whatever I goddamn wanted from life while they watched in bafflement.
It's hard. But stop looking at yourself in the mirror bullying yourself. Most people don't give a second thought about how you look because they are so wrapped up in their own little world. Once you stop being your own worst critic you are free to stick it to the world.
Looks like the suffering olympics have arrived. You bring up incontinence and "impedance" (did you mean impotence?)
as reasons we should be grateful to be alive.
That's basically the "starving children in Africa" argument.
You could use that for just about anything, on just about anyone.
It means nothing in the context of the types of problems people bring up on this site, it's actually something the pro-lifers tend to use. Shameful.
Try telling every other person here that 'line' about how all the people who can't wipe their own ass would be waiting in the wings to spit at their trauma and take their place.
There's a lot of contradictory and telling subtleties, even within that statement, that the statement alone does not properly sum up.
Nothing is ever as simple as "You can shit on your own, unlike me, therefore I want your life!"
Who is to say they wouldn't also end up succumbing to the very problems they traded theirs for?
Who is to say these people didn't already live better lives than the rest of us, prior to their need for medical assistance.
You have to make that distinction, along with quite a few others, as your initial statement alone is too broad.
Blame the victim.
That's what you're doing.
Saying people who realize they are unattractive and suffering the consequences just have an "over" critical eye, when there is nothing "overly" critical or "worst critic" about it.
It's just a normal assessment of a far from ideal situation.
We don't choose to focus on such things, we can't exactly jump out of our skin at any time, we aren't blind and we can see when something isn't right or a hinderance to the pursuit of living well.
And if we were to ever forget, the rest of humanity would be sure to remind us, as they already so often do.
I don't know what universe you reside in, but under no usual circumstances can anybody go about the world just taking what they want from life.
The people who come the closest are the ones with the heftiest privileges-and even they can't have a say over every other thing they want from the world.
These weighty privileges,
Attractiveness being one of them.
Ability to use the toilet-not so much.
This has nothing to do with vanity either, just for the record.
That's wholly mistaken.
People who deal with this degree of impairment and agony from looking a way in which others treat them unfairly and unequally, are usually some of the least shallow or vain individuals to walk the earth.
They know how it feels so they tend to exercise restraint when they feel their minds leaning in to judge another person's looks for being worse for the wear.
We are not narcissists admiring ourselves in the mirror, the preoccupation is not indulgent, it's involuntarily disparaging.
..So you are basically saying we just have to "look on the bright side" and be grateful for what we do have and that this is not a problem worth suffering over in and of itself?
That is absolutely preposterous and atrocious of you to say.
Just Instagram platitudes and falsehoods created by people who don't know the pain of others.
Besides, don't you understand that one problem often leads to more?
Maybe you should read my comment about just how easily one loss breeds another, because after this comment, I'm done here, just futile, (it also amazes me how certain other people are so invested in a topic where they don't even have ground to stand on, no horse in the race, yet they're set on lighting the whole thing to flames, just because their privilege pinkie got stubbed. Juvenile.)
Your entire tone is condescending.
Bringing up the
perceived ugliness, as if it isn't
actually so. Vile and pompous patronizing.
Are you ugly? "Perceived" is a dismissive term and you speak of something so pseudo-analytically even though you have never lived it.
Also "feel ugly"? ..it's not just a feeling, it's a reality.
Insecurity doesn't mean you were actually unattractive.
Everyone has insecurities, but not everyone has a legitimate physical appearance detriment that warrants said insecurities.
Others
do, objectively speaking.
You bring up how you realized others don't really give a fuck what you look like.
And in a way, I agree with you.
Because yea, most people who are not you, who do not have to live inside your body, who do not have to suffer the consequences of that body-do not actually have any investment in how good or bad you look. They're worried about themselves.
But they're worried about themselves LOOKING GOOD, terrified to become the thing they judge with their eyes at every in-person interaction.
They don't give a shit about what you look like while also giving just about every shit.
They are still judging, they are still measuring worth with their vision, they are still treating one level of attractiveness far differently than the other.
That might not be "caring" what you look like exactly, but also, it
IS.
We are talking about two different forms of giving a damn-or not giving one.
It's not about not liking ourselves either,
I actually like myself quite fine, it's my flesh that's the problem, I'm just along for the ride.
It's quite despicable that people always equate the dislike for one's own body with the dislike of one's own self.
I had no choice in what I look like, so in that way, it has nothing to do with 'me'.
Give me a choice in the matter, and maybe then you can start defining
who I am by my face and body.
Just another subtext of lookism.
Let me ask you something, when you get a wart on your foot, do you suddenly become one with the wart?
Embrace the wart?
Praise the wart?
Nope.
You freeze the fucker off your foot because it inconveniences you, it disgusts you and others, it gets in the way every time you take a step.
Me identifying by my body in this form, is basically the same as me identifying with a single vein in my wrist.
It's the same stupid thing.
People have to be comfortable in their skin in order to have any quality of life, we should be able to identify with our physical appearance as much as possible as it is literally how the world's eye views us, why would we ever want to be constantly mistaken for something we are not?
But many are so far from an ideal humansuit that signals their inner self, where nothing short of successfully altering the body to match the mind, will suffice.
It is a similar dysphoria as in transgenderism, not dysmorphia, but body dysphoria. Warranted.
So not only is it an issue within society, but also within one's own individualism, a matter of someone feeling freedom in their own skin.
It's not "the shallow beauty standard of the social media era" and you damn well know it. Lookism has been around as long as humans walked the earth.
It's the most basic and raw of prejudices.
I need nothing but the real world, devoid of social media, to shove my existence toward the trenches.
Social media is simply expediting the issue and openly and inter-connectedly portraying it.
If you've got a grasp on the objective standards of what is aesthetically pleasing in the human form, then you could relatively easily prove where you stand in terms of general physical attractiveness. It's a science, there's nothing subjective about it.
You may find levels of subjectivity within it, but the hard lines of what we are talking about, are largely immutable.
It's part of the reason we are able to instantly assess most people (even when not understanding why) on how good looking or not they appear to be, whether we, personally, are sexually attracted to them or not.
And who are you to say what should or should not affect people in such a damaging way or what can or can't inhibit someone from getting through their day?
I assure you plenty of people find difficulties getting through their day from this issue.
I see posts all the time about problems that I would trade mine for, it doesn't necessarily mean one of us doesn't deserve to suffer as much as we are.
One man's monster is another man's mouse, and vice versa.
We are not all affected in the same degree by the same things.
(and I'm talking about disadvantages, not advantages..the latter of which the desire to complain should be mute.)
What if I told you if all I had to deal with was nerve damage and chronic fatigue (I already have things that are equivalent FYI), I would spring to my senses and walk out my door smiling in the sun, grinning ear to ear like the world was my oyster, never to complain another day in my life.
Because guess what? I can honestly say it!
Does that make it okay for me to tell you that you should be grateful that's all you have to deal with? No!
But you think that's okay.
Plus, you make the assumption that everyone who is ugly is suddenly free from every other problem, that they "only" have to deal with ugliness, which is, in most cases, erroneous and fallacious.
